Study shows decline of segregation

Stat house
May 2001

Study shows decline of segregation
Metropolitan areas are less segregated today than at any time since 1920, a Brookings Institution analysis of the 2000 census data shows.

The 1990s continued a three-decade trend toward residential integration of African American and non-black populations. Metropolitan areas in the West and the South proved to be the most integrated, a fact the authors attribute to rapid economic and population growth in the "sunbelt". But the news isn't all good. A large number of cities are still intensely segregated, especially in the Northeast and Midwest.

In the 291 areas the researchers studied, segregation levels declined in 272 during the 1990s. On average, segregation decreased by 5.5 percent. Yet in 19 areas levels actually increased, and overall more than a quarter are still considered "hypersegregated," or regions in which 60 percent of African American residents would have to move to other neighborhoods to perfectly integrate the city.

The metropolitan areas that desegregated most in the last decade were those that grew the fastest—mainly those in the West and the South. According to the report, in older cities "neighborhood patterns most resemble those of the metropolitan area when it was built and when the United States was much more segregated than today."

Newer and faster-growing cities, on the other hand, "have no pre-determined residential patterns," and "segregation patterns have adjusted to what appears to be a new norm of a more integrated America," the study says.

Most of the decline in segregation results from the integration of all-white areas, the study explains. In 1960, nearly 62 percent of metropolitan areas were less than 1 percent black; today only 23 percent are. "No meaningful portion of the nationwide decline in segregation can be attributed to the movement of whites into highly black enclaves," the authors say.

Harvard University and Brookings Institution researcher Edward L. Glaeser and Duke University's Jacob L. Vigdor wrote the study, titled "Racial Segregation in the 2000 Census: Promising News." —Anne Graber

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